Re: GIMP - Make your car a Transformer

Originally Posted by Minipalmer

That was the toughest part! There's still something off about my feet, but I couldn't tell what it was and got bored and decided to finish it

Thanks for commenting

Hi Minipalmer
If you're interested I think that ambient occlusion might be missing which would sort of make the feet look like they are floating above the ground.
Ambient lighting is a result of light bouncing off objects in an environment causing other objects to become subtly tinted and illuminated. However, due to the angle that light bounces off these surfaces and the given position of the direct light sources, some areas on an object are far less illuminated by ambient lighting than others. Thus they are occluded from ambient lighting. On earth many of our main light sources come from above like the sky, sun, moon, interior overhead lighting as a result there is often a dark area that extends from the center of the area of an object contacting the ground which extends slightly past the outer rim of the contacting surface area. In the case of this image it would be where your feet are touching the floor or where the wheels of the car meet with the ground. Ambient occlusion should also not be confused with shadows which are a result of a lack of illumination resulting from the position and orientation of direct light sources.

You can attempt to simulate this effect in the GIMP by creating a simple fuzzy/blurry black area (with your airbrush/soft paint tool) on a layer between the background (with the ground plane) and the foreground element (yourself) that creates a slight dark rim around the front of the bottom of the feet. I suggest placing this on a separate layer as you can then adjust it's opacity independently of the other layers.

Last edited by BcRich; August 26th, 2012 at 03:24 AM.
Reason: wording ambiguity